Harsh Reality*~
by Soulfire Stories
Summary: takes place after four stories :major spoiler


**Hi journal, **

**You won't believe this. Joey and Pacey had sex. I could hardly believe it; I think my eyes popped out of my head once those words came out of Joey's mouth. I knew she wasn't going to stay a virgin forever but I guess I always thought we would be each other's first. I guess that isn't going to happen. It's just so weird to picture Joey having sex, I don't want it to happen and I don't want her to be having sex with Pacey, if anyone it should be me. Geez I sounded so selfish and plus I'm with Gretchen. Now that Joey has had sex with Pacey, should I be having sex with Gretchen? Why haven't I already had sex with her? Well the relationship is new and she is at a hard time in her life but I think the main reason is because in the back of my mind I always thought it would be Joey and me. The night would be perfect, a nice dinner, walking hand in hand on the beach under the moonlight then when the moment was perfect it would happen, that had always been my dream and now it's shattered, my dream is shattered once more by Pacey Whitter. God if this guy is trying to get back where our friendship was before he is doing a shitty job, I was just getting over him taking the girl I was and could possibly still be in love with and then this had to happen. He had to sleep with her, now I know I have no say in it but didn't he think about what the precautions would be? What the outcome would be? How I would react? I was thinking of telling Gretchen how I feel but then that would put us in awkward stage, me telling her I am pissed off at her baby brother because he slept with his girlfriend who is also my ex-girlfriend who I am still in love with... bad idea. I was thinking of telling Jack or Jen but they would probably tell Joey and that would put me and Joey back where we were at the beginning of the year, tense to be around each other. **

**Why do I even care? She is with Pacey and I am with Gretchen. We have our own lives now, I should be like whatever or say good for you or congratulations or and I care why? But instead I am moping in my room, physically attached to my computer spilling my guts out into you journal. I remember a long time ago I wrote about a feisty brunette who had stolen my heart and made it hers in here, I wrote about the relationship, I wrote about how she made me feel when we were together and now everything I wrote before is gone, it's vanished and I can't find any speck of evidence that it was ever here. **

**I was so happy to see Joey again, with the Mr. Brooks situation, spending a quiet evening on catching up seemed perfect, but something was different about her, her whole demeanor was changed and then I posed the unthinkable, could Joey have had sex? I knew I had to ask her, but my heart prayed for me not to ask her, it pleaded for me to just drop it but then my head told me I had to know. I wish I had listened to my heart, it never stirred me wrong before, sure it got broken a few times but it never stirred me wrong, it always set me on the right path but god this time I went down the wrong path. **

**She had sex. **

**There is nothing that can soften the blow, nothing to ease the pain of knowing that I have lost Joey forever and to him. I can't believe I have lost Joey to Pacey Whitter, a guy who was more a sidekick then the hero. Even the sidekicks get their days I guess. After all this time I still can't believe I lost Joey to someone who doesn't even measure up to the expectations Joey Potter should have. He is on a totally different path then Joey is; Joey wants to go to college and a good one, not one of those community colleges, she wants one of those good colleges like "Harvard" or "Yale" something like that and Pacey well he can't get into college, no college will accept him and if they did he would probably fail out or drop it in a week. Pacey is probably going to be one of those people that grow up working at a gas station or something, no offense to Pacey but he just doesn't have the stuff to keep up on the road Joey is heading down. Joey wants to be this artist that travels all around the world, seeing all the things she never got to see living in a small town like Capeside. She wants to be the girl that gets out, that everyone talks about, she can't live in Capeside forever, she was never the townie sort of girl but see Pacey, he can be content on living in Capeside for the rest of his life, he was born to be a townie. Me and Joey, our paths are the same, we plan on leaving Capeside the day we graduate, accepted in a college or not me and Joey are getting out. Who knows? Maybe Joey and me will leave together. See me and Joey we have been wanting to get out Capeside since the day we were ten years old, we always wanted to see the outside world... to do the Mexican hat dance, to speak French, to be on a plane heading to wherever our hearts led us. **

**Pacey doesn't deserve her and he knows that, he knows that he doesn't deserve her and yet he holds on to her as tight as he can. Because Joey is the one good thing in his life, she represents what he is never going to be: successful. So he clamps onto her and holds on tight, never letting go, because without Joey he is the one thing he will always be: a townie. Joey lets him leech off of her because she tells herself every night that she truly does love him, that her heart belongs to him but it doesn't. See the reason she lets Pacey hold on to her is because he's the one stable thing in her life. He's her security blanket, he'll never leave her, he'll never beat her, he'll never be more successful then her. **

**Sex. It is probably the worse thing they could ever had done, because now they know each other in and out and with each passing day they will realize their real motives for staying together for so long. They won't last past graduation day, she'll leave and he'll stay. That's the bottom line, he's a townie and she's not. **

**Me and Gretchen... we are going to have the same fate as Joey and Pacey are going to have. We won't last past graduation day. Gretchen loves being in Capeside, she loves how all the people know who she is, she loves how they recognize her and wave happily, she loves the fact that she is well known in Capeside and safe. Meanwhile I want to be unknown, I want to go somewhere big and large with lots of people and get in lost in the crowd, I want people to ask who the heck I am. I want to start over. Gretchen is a townie while I am a person on the road, a person who won't be able to live in Capeside; I'll go crazy being in Capeside for the rest of my life, it's just not going to happen. **

**I have been accepted in UCLA. Once we graduate, I'll say the bittersweet good-byes, I'll look Gretchen in the eyes and we'll kiss that one final time knowing it's over and then I'll be gone. **

**There won't be any trace that Dawson Leery was ever in Capeside besides the memories and the pictures. Same with Joey, she's going to leave, I know it. She is going to make the road hers, make sure that no one knows her and then she'll come back to Capeside a few years later and laugh at who she used to be. She'll show up in fancy designer clothes and she'll get out of her brand new red camaro and she'll be beautiful. She'll gloat at how she went to Paris, Mexico, France and she'll show off her pictures and awards and then she'll leave and EVERYONE will remember her. **

**And somewhere between learning who we are and becoming the people we were born to be we'll meet up again. **

**~*Because every Dawson has a Joey and every Joey has a Dawson.*~**

**-Dawson Leery**

**"Do you think every Joey has a Dawson and every Dawson has a Joey?"**


End file.
